Chip Kidd Quotes

#1. I think the genre of comics sometimes overtakes the medium, and people assume that they are kind of frivolous. If you have a good, strong story teller, they can be as affecting as any character in literature. Period.

Chip Kidd

#2. Design is a response to a specific problem. You are given a problem to solve, and then you let the problem itself tell you what your solution is.

Chip Kidd

#3. Design is, literally, purposeful planning. Graphic Design, then, is the form those plans will take.

Chip Kidd

#4. My longing for someone to talk to made Himillsy the lightning bug in my honey jar. I punched holes in the lid so she could breathe.

Chip Kidd

#5. But at the end of the day, you can't major in Making Stuff, so it was Art by default.

Chip Kidd

#6. On the first day of class, the Visual Arts building reclined before me like an old brick whore, egging me to show her one, last, good time. I doubted I was up to the task, but regardless, I entered from the rear, just to give myself the slightest mental edge.

Chip Kidd

#7. ( ... ) photography opened up quite a little Pandora's box, kiddies. ( ... ) Once we no longer had to depend on drawing and painting to record our existence - once they became an option - they mutated ... into a form of expression. And Art for its own sake, God help us, was born.

Chip Kidd

#8. I think too many comic book covers are way too busy, crammed with far too much information, both visual and verbal, that just becomes a dull noise.

Chip Kidd

#9. I am all for the iPad, but trust me - smelling it will get you nowhere.

Chip Kidd

#10. I really liked the design of Batman. I liked the concept. There's a lot more you can do with Batman than most other superheroes.

Chip Kidd

#11. Life is a life-long assignment that must be constantly analyzed, clarified, figured out, and responded to appropriately.

Chip Kidd

#12. Graphic Design for its own sake will never happen, because the concept cancels itself out - a poster about nothing other than itself is not Graphic Design, it's ... makin' ART.

Chip Kidd

#13. I'm a very slow reader.

Chip Kidd

#14. Twenty-six letters: Marjorie Morningstar or Ulysses.
The man-made world means exactly that. There isn't an inch of it that doesn't have to be dealt with, figured out, executed. And it's waiting for you to decide what it's going to look like.

Chip Kidd

#15. What people really want, no matter who they are, is someone to listen to them ... people have a lot on their minds, however trivial, and if you're simply willing to sit there like a sack of dirt and let them yammer, they will tell it to you.

Chip Kidd

#16. Commercial Art tries to make you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas.

Chip Kidd

#17. ( ... ) I'm not much of anything, ( ... ) besides bored and boring, punctuated by fits of scant self-amusement. And you are ... ?

Chip Kidd

#18. A book cover is a distillation. It is a haiku of the story.

Chip Kidd

#19. Penguin Classic, with the orange bands at the top and bottom; and the Gill Sans thirty-sixpoint title, all caps, centered and medium weight, in black on the white band in the middle. One of the designer Tschichold's prouder moments, when he finally woke the hell up and joined the twentieth century.

Chip Kidd

#20. Nothing worth knowing can ever be taught in a classroom.

Chip Kidd

#21. Much is to be gained by eBooks: ease, convenience, portability. But something is definitely lost: tradition, a sensual experience, the comfort of thingy-ness - a little bit of humanity.

Chip Kidd

#22. It's not Art. And Art is not Design.

Chip Kidd

#23. I wouldn't buy a book simply because I like the cover. I would pick it up. The jacket can call your attention to it. But in that sense, Oprah Winfrey is worth all the jackets in the world. A jacket is basically trying to do what she does all on her own.

Chip Kidd

#24. I had no idea what I was doing, I had no idea where I was going, but at some point I stopped - when to keep going would seem like I was going too far.

Chip Kidd

#25. Yes, Garnett Grey was an Architect. Were a psychoanalyst to approach him from behind, tap his shoulder, and say 'Humanity,' Garrett'd spin and respond, without hesitation, 'Solvable'.

Chip Kidd

#26. The thing that I came to realize was that Schulz is the great unifier. Here's the one cartoonist that pretty much everybody can agree on.

Chip Kidd

#27. Never let your mouth write a check that your ass can't cash.

Chip Kidd

#28. After age twenty-five, you're not a victim anymore - you're a volunteer.

Chip Kidd

#29. I still have a steady stream of book cover work. I'm grateful for it. Viva le book!

Chip Kidd

#30. Never fall in love with an idea. They're whores: if the one you're with isn't doing the job, there's always, always, always another.

Chip Kidd

#31. I'd have to say that the things that mean the most to me are the examples of original comic art that I'm able to look at every day, most of them either by notable friends and/or for projects that I've worked on.

Chip Kidd

#32. If you intend to die, you can do anything.

Chip Kidd

#33. Limits are possibilities ... Formal restrictions, contrary to what you might think, free you up by allowing you to concentrate on purer ideas ... You can be crippled by too many choices, especially if you don't know what your goals are.

Chip Kidd

#34. If you can properly define the problem, then you've already defined the solution as well.

Chip Kidd

#35. I've been drawing shoes,' said Sketch, evoking a fireman who's been searching the smoking hulks of scorched buildings for burn victims, 'and it's been going feetingly.

Chip Kidd

#36. Just who are the cheese monkeys? And what do they want?

Chip Kidd

#37. Antisappointment. Anticipation colliding head-on with the certainty of its own doom.

Chip Kidd